Burma

Third Committee of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, which is responsible for social, humanitarian affairs and human rights issues, asked Myanmar to refund citizenship rights of the Muslim minority.

The third Committee consensually approved a draft resolution concerning human rights violation in Myanmar. The Myanmar government was called to provide Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state with equal citizenship rights and prevent violent acts against the Muslim minority by Buddhists in the country.

Hundreds of Buddhists in Rangoon and the Arakan State capital of Sittwe are planning to protest against a visit to Myanmar by a high-level delegation from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) this week.

Tens of thousands of Muslims are have been in temporary camps for more than a year. Tensions in the area remain high, and rights groups say the stateless Rohingya continue to face abuses and restrictions.

It was just after 3 a.m. when the police kicked in Zia Ul Haq's door, then handcuffed and dragged him to the nearby railway tracks. Then the beatings began. Police with batons struck him and nine other Rohingya Muslims in handcuffs on the head and back, says Zia Ul Haq and three witnesses, some of whom also claim to have been beaten.

Authorities in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state have imposed a two-child limit for Muslim Rohingya families, a policy that does not apply to Buddhists in the area and comes amid accusations of ethnic cleansing in the aftermath of sectarian violence.

Local officials said Saturday that the new measure would be applied to two Rakhine townships that border Bangladesh and have the highest Muslim populations in the state. The townships, Buthidaung and Maundaw, are about 95 percent Muslim.

A 16-year-old Muslim boy lay dying on a thin metal table. Bitten by a rabid dog a month ago, he convulsed and drooled as his parents wedged a stick between his teeth to stop him from biting off his tongue.

Human Rights Watch on Monday accused authorities in Myanmar's western Rakhine State of crimes against humanity in the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims last year, charges the government dismissed as one-sided and "unacceptable".

Appealing for UN intervention to stop attacks on Muslims in Burma, a world Muslim body has urged the Burmese government to allow in a ministerial delegation to discuss anti-Muslim violence in the Buddhist country.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation calls on "Burmese authorities to strongly respond to the organization's appeal and allow a ministerial OIC delegation to visit" Burma, the OIC said in a statement cited by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Last month more than 40 people died in violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the central Burmese town of Meiktila. The BBC's South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head looks at the causes of the violence.

At first sight it appears that Meiktila has been hit by a natural disaster. Entire neighbourhoods have been levelled, homes of brick and cement smashed to rubble.

Myanmar's Muslim leaders have appealed to President Thein Sein to take swift action to quell religious violence, accusing security forces of standing by as rioters went on a rampage.

"These violent attacks include crimes such as arson and massacres which deserve heavy penalties," four groups including the Islamic Religious Affairs Council and the Myanmar Muslim National Affairs Organization wrote in an open letter to the president.

A rampaging mob set fire to a mosque and homes in a central Myanmar town, a police official said Wednesday, the latest outbreak of violence in communal unrest that has left at least 40 people dead.

A week after Buddhist-Muslim clashes erupted, a mosque was torched in Nattalin town, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of the country's commercial hub of Yangon, a police official who did not want to be named told AFP.

A Nattalin resident said police were overwhelmed as a mob arrived in the town, setting fire to the mosque before leaving.